After the longest year of a Cleveland fan's life, the former king's biggest critic watches sweet validation unfold at the NBA Finals

MIAMI — That was sweet. I don't think schadenfreude quite covers the feeling of watching LeBron James and the Miami Heat fly apart in the NBA Finals: Schadenfreude is a personal, private feeling, quite a bit more delicate than the raucous mixture of public derision and public glee inspired by the Whore of Akron's flaccid legacy.

When time ran out, James wobbled downcourt, toward the Heat bench. He was looking for Dwyane Wade, looking for a hug. He held Wade to him for a while; it looked like an apology. Then LeBron drifted toward the scrum of players and coaches from both teams exchanging best wishes, yet somehow, as he did during the series, he got lost halfway. He looked baffled. Broken.

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Much later, in his press conference, he was asked about the folks rooting for him to fail, and his reply — "They got to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had today. And I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live." — contemptuous and contemptible, revealed how little James truly grasps of sports, fanhood, and himself.

He'd be perfectly correct to excoriate the media for turning a high-school phenom into a preening fraud, but that would call into question his own meaning as a brand — a purveyor of shoes, soda pop, and State Farm insurance — which is hardly what makes James such a loathsome piece of work to so many people who couldn't care less about Cleveland or the Cavs.

It was James who asked ESPN for an hour of prime-time schmuckery, and who used children as props in a ludicrous attempt to disguise his megalomania. It was James who named it "The Decision," salting the wounds of two generations of Cleveland fans scarred forever by The Shot, The Drive, and The Fumble. It was James who told the world how easy it was going to be for the Heat to win a half-dozen and more NBA titles. And it was James who couldn't stop tweeting and talking and taking cheap shots all season long at the teammates, franchise, and town that loved him.

The Whore of Akron earned each dram of vitriol and validated every critic. Because, finally, it was LeBron who, when it came time to put up or shut up, lacked the sack and the grace to do either. Today, like every day, he'll wake up nothing but a loser.

Writer-at-large Scott Raab's new book, The Whore of Akron: One Man's Search for the Soul of LeBron James, is now available for pre-order. In the meantime, click here to follow the @Scott_Raab journey on Twitter and click the tabs above at left for more on LeBron's flight.